Friday, March 4, 2011

Love Strawberries

One of my favourite childhood memories is picking strawberries with my grandmother in her garden. She used to put on her big red garden hat, I would carry a small basket and off we’d go to hunt for strawberries. I absolutely loved every second of it!My grandmother – or Ma – as I called her, used to pick the strawberries and I had the very important job of putting them neatly into the basket. Needless to say, a lot of the strawberries never made it into the basket as soon as my Ma turned her back. But at eight years old, I thought I was being cleverly sneaky without realising that the strawberry stains on my face linked me directly to the crime.

My Ma passed away a couple years later and for a long time I missed our special strawberry time. I missed the talks we had, the things we laughed about and just being around her. To this day I still wish that I could go strawberry picking with my grandmother. What things would we talk about? What new life lessons would she pass on to me?

Besides being the best fruit ever, strawberries are one of the best memories I have of my grandmother. Naturally I can’t recall every detail about our times together but I do remember that she taught me to always love and be thankful in life and of course, she taught me to love strawberries : )

Reading this post made me think about my grandma. Every Friday after lunch, she and my grandpa would go luxury shopping, and obviously being the youngest granchild at that time, I would tag along. I could put anything I wanted in the trolley and naturally got away with anything. We're fortunate to have of the best childhood memories with our grandparents.